Branding GenZ: Lessons Learned from the Redesigns of Iconic Logos

According to this study by Siege Media, Gen Z pays more attention to brand logos than older generations do. This doesn’t surprise me given how visual these digital natives are – screening 24/7 and shopping with an 8 second filter. With eagle eyes for a brand’s true identity, Gen Z will remember brands that can design and position their logo in a manner that’s meaningful, authentic or worthy of their loyalty. Iconic, aspirational and altruistic brands have profit potential among this brand fickle, semi-loyal generation of discerning shoppers. Read on for more results…

How do you know if your brand is working for you? And what does “successful branding” even entail?

Over the past decade, brands have made their best attempts at addressing these questions, specifically when it comes to millennial consumers. Marketers have spent a great deal of time and effort to understand this generation’s role in the workplace, what they care about and how they shop. The topic of millennials has been widely covered in major publications and saturated marketing blogs, making it safe to assume this demographic is now well-understood. Right when marketers thought they had it all figured out, Generation Z appeared on the map as the hottest topic of discussion.

Widely recognized as the next consumer powerhouse, Gen Z, now 23 or younger, makes up a quarter of the U.S. population and is expected to account for 40 percent of all consumers by 2020. Understanding the Gen-Z perspective will be key to brand survival in the next decade and beyond, so what’s a better place to start than by evaluating how this generation views brand logos.

It’s important to consider what it is about branding that burns itself collective memory. In an effort to better understand this and gain insight into the mind of Gen Z, this design study of over 8,000 people in the United States, gave participants a multiple choice test to see if they could identify the real logo of eight iconic food brands when it was placed in a line-up with imposters. It explores elements like color, font and tagline to see what was remembered most by consumers, while comparing the results of Gen-Zers to their generational predecessors.